PROLOGUE 5 



British colonies at the Antipodes, their substance and inner 

 life, that for which, through more than half-a-century, 

 Australia existed, that out of which all else has grown. 

 The historical specialist * is perplexed by an inability 

 to discover the '' sociology " of a passage in Australian 

 history that she has skilfully delineated. I presume to 

 think that the solution of her problem will be found 

 here. The " autocracy " of Governor Macquarie was 

 a final and unsuccessful attempt to govern the Colony 

 on the lines the British Government designed from the 

 first. Those lines were not of Nature's drawing. The 

 true lines on which the Colony was to be built were not 

 prearranged ; they were found unconsciously by in- 

 dividuals who were bent on their own ends. The 

 abortive experiment being recognised as a failure, the 

 ground was left clear for a right design that was of 

 Nature's devising. The convict settlement being in 

 principle condemned, the pastoral community was 

 henceforth free to develop along its natural lines. 



All else, I said, has grown out of this root. The 

 goldfields, and all the transformations they wrought, 

 are only an episode in comparison, tending to aggran- 

 dise the pastoral and central life of the Australian 

 communities. Other interests rise up by the side of 

 it, its nurslings, like the mechanical industries, or 

 spring up out of it by natural growth, as agriculture 

 and horticulture ; but, at the heart of everything 

 the pastoral interest remains, narrowed in area, but 

 deepened in intensity, and destined to an unlimited 

 duration. The history of Australia for fifty or sixty 

 years is the history of that interest ; its political history 

 is predominantly pastoral, and the men who figure most 

 prominently in that history were pastoralists. That 



* Dr. Mabion Phillips, A Colonial Autocracy, London, 1909, 

 p. 331. Perhaps the two best monographs on Australian history 

 have been produced by women. The other is Ida Lee's (or 

 Mrs. Bruce Marriott's) The Coming of the English to Australia, 

 London, 1909. I have since found that Dr. Marion PhiUips 

 has clearly discerned and firmly grasped the key to the early 

 history of Australia. See her Colonial Autocracy, p. 331, etc. 



